


Square Inches

by IchiBri



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood, Gen, Human Body Parts, Murder, POV First Person, Psychological, Sociological, Underground Dealings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:38:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2547761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IchiBri/pseuds/IchiBri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Makishima finds himself doing business with a new dealer, and he is less than pleased with the experience.  He can not let any possible liabilities walk away alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square Inches

“How many inches?”

“243.6.”

The burly man before me scratched the stubble of his chin, and his copper orbs glared suspiciously at the briefcase I held with my right hand. The glare of the nearby light post illuminated the skepticism written all over his features. 

He was a new dealer – not the pawn I normally sold to – and that fact was glaringly obvious. My reputation had yet to reach his ears, or maybe his pea sized brain couldn't comprehend the danger he was in. Either way, he had become a liability the moment he told me his name – an amateur mistake in this field of business. I had no use for names; names only complicated the whole transaction, making it that much easier to follow the trail of bread crumbs.

Hunter S. Thompson once said, “In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” and I was is no way a stupid man. This middle man, on the other hand, had committed the final sin – one that lacked the professionalism of a seasoned veteran in the dealings of the underground market. 

Unforgivable.

“Do you have any proof of its length?”

What an ignorant question from an equally ignorant pig! Did he expect me to open the briefcase and physically measure the product right before his eyes? Even the greenest of greenhorns wouldn't be foolish enough to risk the wandering eyes of potential witnesses even in the depths of an alley hidden under the cover of night. Even in the world ruled by villains, there was a code of conduct and unspoken trust between parties whom equally jeopardized their freedom to keep the questionable business of even more questionable products operating smoothly. For those who broke the implicit code, they often found themselves gasping for breath under thousands of gallons of sea water or screaming their final string of syllables into the fibers of duct tape.

“My word and my word alone.”

My answer seemed to confuse the gruff gentleman as he contemplated his next words, but whatever he could have possibly said, nothing which spouted from his lips could change how this transaction would inevitably end.

“That'll have to do,” he finally muttered with a toxic distaste to his tongue. The man's hand slipped into his coat pocket, and he had the gall to withdraw a calculator. If the man could not multiply simple math in his head, I greatly wondered where his intelligence lied, that was if he had any. 

I supplied the answer for him, “$2,923.20”

A simple flick of the wrist the man didn't see coming was all it took for his knees to buckle. Calloused hands grasped at the laceration to his neck. As the ever familiar stain of crimson leached between his clawing fingers, the color of his cheeks paled. The life in his copper orbs drained away until not even his incompetence remained.

The cut throat razor had a fitting name, although I supposed its original use was not for cutting throats. It did a splendid job though. A perfectly clean cut – a specific amount of pressure applied over any portion of the neck added to a swift movement of the arm. With the right amount of skill and practice, the slice of flesh would come out flawlessly every time.

Clean up was also a matter of skill and proficiency. Disposing of the body would be too tiresome – more effort than trash deserved. Knowing that was true for any member of the human race became critical once one entered the underground society. Trash could be left where it fell as long as one was careful before the interaction took place. Leave no fingerprints or any viable forms of DNA. That meant no touching the body when breath still flowed through its lungs. A weapon easily concealed as well as quiet in taking lives would be favorable – a cut throat razor was my preferred. The weapon needed to be personal – nothing picked up on the side of street and absolutely nothing the body had previously touched. Physics was essential to stay out of the path of blood spatter. Nothing pointed a finger faster than the body's DNA smeared on the front of a sweat shirt or a trail of crimson footprints leading straight to the not-so-masterful-mind. Maybe the most important of all was leave no witnesses – not even blind sheep that would be easily manipulated and turned into pawns. Witnesses never became pawns, even though both eventually ended up as discarded trash. 

The shine of liquid crimson dripped from the razor blade to splatter on the concrete below. A second swift flick of my wrist sent the last remaining droplets to collide with the chipped bricks of the building. I stepped back from the engulfing pool of blood – a substance which once signified life but now denoted death. Ironic how that worked. When trapped in the body and even when trickling from flesh, blood meant a person was alive. But when surrounding an immobile body – staining concrete and flesh all the same – the congealing liquid signed the death certificate. 

I safely pocketed the cut throat razor in its same place of concealment within my jacket and turned my back on the lump of a man hidden within the shadows. With my briefcase still in hand, I inconspicuously joined the foot traffic of the busy street without a single person detecting I hadn't been there all along. Not one of them questioned why a man with a briefcase would have slunk from the darkest depths of an alley to join the sidewalk and continue on his way. 

That was the problem with humanity. People were like a flock of sheep – they blindly followed where they were told to, never thinking to ask why. Yet despite the fact that humanity had willingly turned themselves into a herd, everyone was still alone. Everyone was empty. People no longer needed others. Relationships could always be replaced – spares could always be found.

I, Makishima Shougo, grew tired of such a world and decided to change it. I desired to see the splendor of people's true souls – the raw emotions society said we should bottle up inside. What happened to a person's own will? Where have their abilities to examine their own motives and decide a path for themselves gone? 

The shrill scream that rang down the street as I turned the corner was music to my ears. That was what I wanted to hear – an emotion one would not show on any other occasion. The force of reality upon stumbling on the scene of a brutal killing slammed into people's minds like nothing else. It forced them to face a part of themselves – a part that condoned the act.

After all, Leo Tolstoy once said, “The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.” The law was society, and society was its laws. Society bended the definition of justice to please them. The system condemned one rapist but let another walk free. Is that not condoning all acts of sexual assault? One murderer was sentenced to death while another weaseled their way to freedom – no consequences for their actions whatsoever. Does that not condone the killing of another human being? Two men shared equal responsibility for robbing a store, but only one was charged and locked behind bars. Is that not ignoring the second man's guilt as well?

How could society say what I did was wrong when they willingly overlooked far worse crimes than disposing of an underground dealer who dealt in human body parts? I was merely a catalyst – a means to open the sheep's eyes. I was as disposable as any other human being. In fact, I would gladly be killed by someone who had the will to kill – someone who decided their life for themselves. But that day had yet to come. And until that day would finally arrive, I would continue to be humanity's catalyst. 

But first thing's first. I needed to contact my normal dealer and sell off the products I carried. Who would have thought the entirety of a grown man's skin – all 243.6 square inches of it – would fit inside a briefcase?


End file.
